


Muscle Memory

by mautadite



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Multi, Post-Game(s), Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9295406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: Mahariel’s heard about contagious mannerisms before. She gets to see the phenomenon in action once again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy! <3

Mahariel finishes reading the scroll and lets it go fluttering down to the table. She stretches back in the chair, feels the bones in her shoulders creak and pop. It’s been a long day on the road, and all her kinks feel like they have extra kinks on top of them.

“I never know if she sends me these out of a sense of obligation, gratefulness, or as some kind of joke.”

She’s heard about contagious mannerisms, or whatever they’re actually called, from Wynne or Leliana or someone else. She gets to see the phenomenon in action once again now: on the inn’s bed, Zevran stretches too, purring like some great feline, and Alistair mimics the action as he stands near the looking glass. Mahariel wonders if it’s a sign that they spend too much time around each other, but it’s a thought that’s banished almost immediately. She’s known a lot of excess in her life, and she’ll be damned if this is one of them. 

“Fereldan’s lovely queen?” Zevran guesses. He’s naked, because he has no reason not to be, a sheet thrown over his lower half in an effort to be tantalising rather than for modesty’s sake. Mahariel smiles lazily at him.

“The one and only.” She picks up the scroll once again to show off the seal. “An invitation to a ball, this one in a few weeks.”

“Maker’s breath, another one?” Alistair dabs at his face with a towel, and sits next to Zevran on the bed. Zev immediately tugs him down to start playing with his hair; he submits to this with all the contentedness of a pampered hound. “How subtle is the ‘don’t bring those two idiots’ this time?”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Mahariel grins. “She didn’t mention you two wastrels at all.”

“Ach,” Zevran says feelingly, hand over heart. 

“You wouldn’t want to go anyway,” she continues, nodding especially at Alistair.

“True enough. Denerim is like a rock in your boot; fairly big and easy to see how it’s harmful, but it’s absolute murder to get it out from under you.” He shrugs, and snuggles closer to Zevran. “It’s not like I blame her for not wanting me there, anyway. I don’t want anyone getting any more kingly ideas.”

“It’s these broad, handsome shoulders of yours, I swear,” says Zevran solemnly. “Absolutely perfect for resting responsibility on.”

Alistair snorts, but otherwise lets himself be petted: on his arms, through his hair, on these self-same shoulders. It puts Mahariel at ease, just watching them like that; two year ago Alistair would have flinched and jumped out of his skin had Zevran so much as batted an eyelash at him. (And eyelashes had indeed been batted, many a time.) It’s wonderful to look along the road they’ve travelled, see all the space they’ve covered.

“Well, no need to worry. I’ve already started writing up the politest ‘no’ that I can think of in my head. We’d never be able to make it, anyway; I don’t see us heading east for another month.”

Amaranthine is a few months behind them; Mahariel has a few more ghosts to mingle with those that dance in her head, a few more aches in her heart, and all the calluses and scars to show how she got them. The warden commander’s mantle still rests squarely on her shoulders, and she’s doing everything in her power to live up to the title, do everything that Duncan would want of her, everything that Alistair expects of her, everything that Zevran believes she can be. But amidst all that, between towns and stray darkspawn and righting every wrong that she can… she’s determined to take some time. 

She looks at her lovers, intertwined on the bed. Moments like these are the best way.

“In answer to your previous question,” Zevran says, running his fingers through Alistair’s hair, “I am thinking it is politesse, and a bit of gratefulness as well. Queen Anora did not strike me as the type whose skills lay anywhere in the vicinity of humour.”

“You may be right about that,” Mahariel admits. Anora, in addition to all her other charms, isn’t one to forget, and she and Mahariel had helped each other immensely in their times of need. They are very different women at the root of it, and will probably never see eye of eye on many things. But if sending her invitations to balls every now and then is her way of showing gratitude, reaching out, Mahariel can appreciate that.

“Who knows, perhaps one day I’ll accept. I’ll need to pay a visit to the capital at some point.” She stands, stretching once again and feeling a few of her stresses melt away. As if on cue, her lovers stretch as well, their limbs intertwining nicely, all tangled up in the sheets. She stalks over to the bed. Mahariel had planned to go over the rest of the letters that had managed to catch up to her at this inn, but it’s the kind of night where she listens to her body and her heart, and right now, they’re both carrying her to the place she fits best. “Still can’t say that I’d ever take either of you layabouts, though. Goodness, I don’t think either of you knows how to _dance_!”

She puts on her very best human society airs to say it; judging by the looks on their faces, she sounds as ridiculous as she expects. Alistair curls an arm around her waist and tugs her in, so that they’re all in one, jumbled pile.

“You’re quite right, I don’t dance,” he says cheerily, nuzzling into her neck. “Something that you should be thanking the Maker for every day.”

Mahariel laughs. There was a time when her mouth didn’t know how to do such a thing, certainly not so freely, but now these sounds fall from her lips like rain on a canopy of trees.

Zevran detangles himself from their little pile, solely, it seems, for the pleasure of being on top when he kisses them both, one after the other.

“Give yourself some credit, amor,” he says. “I know one dance that you are quite good at.”

Arching up, Mahariel receives his kiss with a smile curving on her lips and a hand keeping Alistair close. They slide together, warmth and friction kicking up between the sheets, and begin to move, once again, as one.


End file.
